Only 17% of brand leaders believe their organisations are ahead of the curve when it comes to organising for ecommerce.
For the fourth consecutive year, Kantar and Profitero surveyed nearly 200 global brand leaders to understand trends in how companies are organising and strategising for ecommerce.
The survey findings reveal that many manufacturers are still unprepared when it comes to readying their business for digital transformation, with most organisations lacking a true strategy for integrating ecommerce into the overall business structure, and many continuing to operate in ‘channel silos’. For example, 40% of respondents report that their organisations lack concrete goals or measurable objectives for ecommerce. Only 11% say that each functional team in their organisation has specific ecommerce goals built into strategic growth plans and KPIs.
While most organisations continue to prioritise ecommerce and employ solid strategies to build their businesses, there are several key areas that they can better embrace to reach the next level of growth. The key question now is what does “advanced ecommerce” look like, and what will it take to achieve this?
Seven key trends emerged from this year’s study:
Most manufacturers are trying to force fit offline strategies into the online world, which is only making channel conflict and profitability issues worse. One quarter of brand respondents (25%) report their companies lack a dedicated ecommerce assortment strategy, while 38% report they are simply adapting their offline assortment for ecommerce. 32% report that they have yet to develop an ecommerce specific pricing strategy.
Organisations are struggling to do little more than tackle the basics when it comes to content. Brands have invested more in product content than any other area of ecommerce but still struggle to achieve quality over quantity. 60% of companies only have basic content and/or basic + enhanced for top SKUs; only 15% are optimising content to drive sales lift.
The true promise of using data and analytics to drive sales growth remains elusive. 61% of brand respondents are only accessing sales and share data for their retailer websites and are not investing in digital shelf or shopper panel data to understand how to optimise opportunities. Just 8% are applying predictive analytics to their ecommerce business.
